Murdered V-Rod Muscle Power

I PURCHASED the bike new back in November 2013 from Fraser Motorcycles. Previous to that I had a Harley-Davidson Rocker C and a Softail; having already owned two air-cooled Harleys I wanted to go for something new here in Western Australia.

My original plan was to build either a V-Rod Muscle with a Sprintex Charger protruding through the airbox cover, or to build a V-Rod Muscle with a decent size turbo to make things a little interesting and hopefully make some good numbers on the dyno.

After purchasing the Harley on a Saturday, I managed to sneak in about 200 km of riding before it was time to hand the keys over to my good friend Ben Fullgrabe, a spray painter from my brother’s shop, Kustom Rides Panel and Paint. It was then that the bike took a turn for the better. 

The bike was stripped down to a bare frame where the majority of the parts were blacked out, thrown out, or replaced. The bike received a full makeover including wrapped forks, under-bar mirrors, aftermarket grips, pegs and a number plate holder. 

The seat was sent off to Munster Motor Trimmers where it was redone using crocodile and ostrich skin, and finished off with gold stitching.

It was at this point that I decided to stick with the black and gold colour theme throughout the whole bike. Ben really wanted to get the paint job right by having gold front to back without over-doing it. The whole bike is actually painted and not just stickers that have been cleared over; right down to the font inside the rims. Photos don’t do the bike justice; the depth in the paint work alone sets my bike right off.

The head lamp I wanted to be different so we made it out of three different head lamps including the original brackets from the standard one. 

The tail lamps were tinted black and kept as I wanted to keep that tough muscle rear end. 

The boys at Kustom Rides did a neat job with the airbags and even went to the extent of cutting and modifying the belt guard and other parts so the bike could be ridden completely aired out and slammed.

Now it was time for the engine to be tricked up. I originally wanted a turbo kit that no-one else would have here in Australia as I wanted to build a bike that was different but still looked like a Muscle. I had the turbo kit started in the UK by a mob called Big CC Racing. The kit included manifolds, turbo, plenum, exhaust, blow off valve and waste gate. Once the kit got here to Australia, both myself and my best friend, Daniel Simunov, got it straight down to Ben to be colour-coated then fitted to the bike. 

The last piece of the puzzle was to sort the fuel system, ECU and tune it. 

The bike is still running a standard set of injectors but pressurised using an Aeroflow Fuel Pressure Regulator, braided lines and a Walbro fuel pump. 

Being an auto sparky myself, I did some research into a few different aftermarket computers and decided to go with Dynojet’s V4 Power Commander with the external on-board LCD handset which I mounted on the dash and colour coded also. 

The bike was finished with one last thing to do. Tune it! We took the bike down to my good friend Justin at BYE Performance where he made the magic happen. Like all builds, as soon as we started making good power we had the odd leak or fuel issue, but like the professional Justin is, we had it sorted in no time. The bike was making good power and ran smoother than ever and is only running premium unleaded petrol. Torque: 279.4 Nm @ 184 km/h. Power: 181.4 hp @ 196 km/h. 

I couldn’t have done all this without the support and help I got from my beautiful girl, Kara Hagen, and my friends. I’d like to say thank you to all the boys at Kustom Rides Panel and Paint, Justin at BYE Performance, Cameron Raper and Daniel Simunov for helping with the design, and my brother Al Morais for everything else.

feature by Mitch R Christ’mass